WHAT WE DISLIKED:

Introduction

It hasn’t been long since Nvidia’s last launch; in fact, it’s only been a week. Just 7 days ago saw the release of the GeForce GTX 780, a graphics card which managed to impress us with it convincing combination of gaming horsepower, innovative features, and strong overclocking. Kepler 2.0, as it turns out, looks to be a big winner.

And today marks the launch of the next in Nvidia’s gaming stable: the GeForce GTX 770. While we may be a bit surprised with the speed in which Nvidia moved to release this card so quickly after the GTX 780 only a week ago, we can’t say we’re surprised at what we saw when we got a closer look.

The Gigabyte GTX 770 OC Windforce is the latest in the company’s popular model series, and this model now comes with an updated version of its namesake cooler. We’ve been impressed in the past with Windforce graphics cards, and we suspect this new one will be no different. It’s got a fresh look, constructed in metal rather than plastic, and comes with an aggressive factory overclock.

And Nvidia hasn’t made this simply a cut-down version of the flagship GTX 780; this new 770 gets the full treatment in terms of innovative features such as ShadowPlay, Adaptive Temperature Control, and an updated GPU Boost 2.0.

Looks like a great card so far, so let’s get the Gigabyte GTX 770 OC Windforce on the bench and see how it performs.

Those temps aren’t high, they’re about where they should be. It’s important to remember that these new Kepler cards don’t cool like they used to on “Auto”; they are now controlled by the Temperature Target.

If you want better temperatures, just use MSI Afterburner and adjust the target down lower, and the fan will automatically adjust the speeds to reach that new target.

The lower you make the temp target, the faster the fans will run though, just something to keep in mind, although the fans on the Gigabyte card run very quiet to begin with.